Press Release

The Mothers & The Daughters are the offspring of original abstract paintings by Trudy Montgomery referencing and honouring the Divine Feminine in all women. These paintings were conceived while the artist was pregnant and are only now, after a four year gestation, ready for presentation in the world.

Trudy Montgomery has been working with imagery of the Divine Feminine since 2010 with her series of Union paintings, in which she searched for a dynamic balance between the opposing forces of masculine and feminine, a struggle experienced in herself and the world. Her own personal journey has seen a deepening of her connection with the Divine Feminine through meditation and spiritual reflection, also expressed in her series of Yantras painted in India in 2012.

The Mothers & The Daughters series acknowledges the Divine Feminine as the source of birth, creation and the home of extraordinary creativity. Individual images also reference, quite by accident, the physical anatomy of a woman’s vagina, womb and birth canal; the portal through which new life enters this world. It is, after all, our mothers and their daughters who embody the Divine Feminine today.

While derivative of the parent works on canvas and in the same vivid palette, these new works offer something new: symmetry and a kaleidoscopic mysticism that evokes a sense of being at the threshold of another realm. Presented as digital c-prints, these painterly photographs provide the viewer with an experience that is at once ancient and futuristic.

The Mothers can be seen as originating from the past and are created where the original image is reflected to the left, while The Daughters emerge when reflected to the right, referencing forward in time. The work can also be seen as a visual expression of the divine breath of the Great Mother, with the inhale representing The Mothers and the exhale, The Daughters.

In this time of girl power in the West, as the equal rights of women are given importance and credence in the media and upheld by the judiciary, it is fitting that this body of work is now exhibited for the first time.